BUSINESS PLAN
Executive Summary
Delish Beach Café is an outstanding eating experience right by the beach, known for its great foods and drinks in an environment of warmth. As an all season restaurant, Delish Beach Café allows its summer visitors to enjoy an excellent dining experience on the sunny terrace, enjoy the fresh local products, enjoy a wide variety of cold and hot drinks, and picnicking on the beach. Visitors are also able to see and purchase the traditional beach products and a wide variety of seaside theme products. During winter, the visitors can have a bracing beach walk, and thereafter, enjoy the comfort of the restaurant’s chairs around the warmth and luxury of the ever-burning wood stove. Indeed, Delish Beach Café offers an experience like no other.
Started in 2009, the restaurant continues to invest in exceptional facilities, and creates some of the world’s most desired properties. It maintains its brand through the delivery of unique style of luxury by combining tradition, quality, and innovation. Delivery of the legendary service to the guests also helps in maintaining the brand. Above all, the restaurant focuses on the core brand attributes which include delicious meals, prepared to international standards; excellent dining experience, and serene beach experience.
Vision
Mission
Delish Beach Café aims at creating value to its customers by offering wide variety of delicious meals and delivering high level of service. It’s committed to creating quality services and facilities that give meaningful leisure experience to customers, especially the leisure travelers. The employees are expected to provide exceptional levels of service to the guests.
Commitment
The café is committed towards the customers through efficiency, quality products and services, maximizing the dining experience, building partnerships, and creating value; towards the society through job creation, building good corporate citizen, and caring for the environment; and towards the associates through offering equal opportunities, suitable work conditions, building one family, and enhancing creativity.
Company history and ownership
Delish Beach Café was started in 2009 by David and Family as a fast food restaurant. Started with a small capital and serving only three types of meals, the restaurant grew successfully in 2009 and broadened its offerings. From a sitting capacity of 30 guests in 2009, the café expanded and doubled its size by the end of 2010. The net profit also doubled during the same period. The one year success was a milestone that indicated how fast and successful the cafeteria could be. This gave the owners the confidence in expanding the cafeteria further, both in size and in offerings. The cafeteria expanded its services outside the fast foods bracket and started offering complete meals. In 2011, land was secured around the beach and the cafeteria moved to the strategic land, where it remains to date. The cafeteria is strategically located and best suited to serve the beach visitors. The menu was expanded further to include international dishes.
The restaurant therefore remains focused on improving the quality of its products, level of service, and the price of its products in order to beat its competitors and enjoy the competitive advantage. Offering excellent dining experience and other luxury services, is an added advantage to the restaurant. The strength of the restaurant’s management team, the staff, the brand, and all the support provided by the corporate structure, are aimed at achieving competitive advantage and being at a top competitive position in the market. The supplemental offerings and amenities are enticing and attracts more and customers. The lounges, food service, fitness facilities, beach experience, recreational features, personal services, and the electronics, are all attractive.
Past Performance Summary (Percentage Gross Margin and Percentage Net Profit)
Products and services
The restaurant provides wide range of products and services to suit the vast needs and desires of its guests. Currently the cafeteria has been upgraded into a fully fledged hotel with spacious rooms and suits with exquisite decorations and furnished to provide warmth and comfort, and built with the requirements of a modern super-luxury establishment. The public spaces display beauty and elegance. The restaurant serves traditional and modern dishes with fresh seasonal ingredients. It also provides an informal setting for international dining. Other amenities include bar, car park, laundry service, gymnasium, internet access, satellite TV channels, and local TV, among others.
Market Analysis
Catering industry is one of the most important industries that serve individuals and organizations with food, drinks, and other services including event management. As a highly competitive industry, any company within this industry needs to develop competitive advantage. With this in mind, Delish Beach Café tries to compete effectively in terms of price, quality of products, and levels of service. The cafeteria directly competes with independent hotels in the area. It also competes with other luxury hotels globally.
The competitive advantage of Delish Beach Café is not only in matching or surpassing what its competitors do, but identifying what the customers want and then satisfying the customers’ expectations. The restaurant’s main focus is to satisfy the needs of its customers by offering value and excellent dining experience.
Market segmentation
The restaurant’s market is composed of individual and organizational (group) guests. The guests are categorized into luxury guests, leisure guests, and ordinary visitors.
The table below shows the total number of visitors per category (from 2010 to 2012)
This information is presented in the graph below
It’s evident from the graph that the luxury guests currently form the greatest market segment. The number of the luxury and leisure guests has been increasing while that of ordinary guests has been decreasing. This is due to the restaurant’s increasing efforts in offering the luxury services.
2012 market segmentation
Strategy and Implementation Summary
The company believes in creating value to customers. This, it aims to achieve through delivering high quality service to customers.
Improving occupancy – Occupancy at the restaurant remains a strategic issue that affects the performance of the company. Occupancy can be improved by either splashing the prices so that the services are relatively cheaper than the competitors’, or offering irresistible and compelling products and services. By providing ample and convenient parking, using signage and visual appeals, providing necessary room conveniences, developing an appropriate marketing plan, and with appropriate staffing, occupancy level is likely to improve. With high occupancy levels, the restaurant is sure to rise to a market leadership position.
Staffing – The delivery of excellent service to customers depends on the capabilities of restaurant’s staff. The restaurant can improve the quality of its staff through hiring the right candidates, training, and ensuring that high professional and ethical standards are met by all the employees. The employees are treated fairly, impartially, and with a lot of respect, and are motivated through competitive remuneration, promotions, and good working conditions. With highly capable and motivated staff, the restaurant is sure to achieve its goals; the goal of excellence. The restaurant continues to invest in its employees in order to get the best out of them.
Achieving strong financial performance – The success of the restaurant is measured by its financial well being. The restaurant’s efforts are channeled towards realizing strong financial position with significant cash balances and low level of gearing. The restaurant remains focused in improving its operating performances.
The value chain advantage
The restaurant engages in activities that create value and develop competitive advantage. The restaurant’s inbound logistics are well managed in a manner that the value created exceeds the cost of the products. The restaurant’s quality checks ensure that the input materials conform to the required quality standards and freshness. Efficiency is the key principle in the restaurant’s inventory control.
The restaurant prides in its operations and service activities as the greatest contributor of competitive advantage throughout all the offerings. The compliance, policies and procedures are all aimed at creating value and developing competitive advantage. The financial performance monitoring and risk management, all contribute towards value creation. The restaurant’s procurement system is excellent. The human resources management system ensures that the workforce has the required know-how and is motivated through promotions, rewards, and better working conditions.
The cost-leadership strategy
The restaurant employs the cost-cutting strategy in all its areas of operation. This strategy has enabled Delish Beach Café to grow considerable within the last three years. Among its competitors in the industry, Delish Beach Café is generally a low cost producer. This strategy allows it to offer its products and services at low prices or at average industry prices. When the products and services are offered at average industry prices, the company makes more profit as compared to its competitors (Porter, 1998). In addition, if the company offers its products and services at a price below the industry average, it attracts more and more customers and gains a high market share. This is what has made Delish Beach Café to remain in the growth line. In case of a price war, the company is able to maintain some of its profitability even after lowering the prices below those of the competitors (Porter, 1998). In such a case, the competitors suffer the losses and lose their market share. This strategy has been a stronger competitive advantage to Delish Beach Café. Even in the absence of price war, the company is still able to remain profitable if the prices fall.
Started as a small fast food café, Delish Beach Café has managed to apply the cost leadership strategy successfully and has broadened its market into remarkably diversified international foods with investments in other services. This strategy has been achieved through the improved efficiencies, optimal outsourcing, vertical integration, and above all, favorable policies, principles, and values of the company. The restaurant also avoids some costs. When its competitors are not able to lower their costs at a similar rate, the company becomes strategically positioned to attract more customers, including those of its competitors.
Works Cited
Porter, M. E. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. Free Press, 1998.
Svala, H. D. Catering and Ballroom Rental Business Plan. Web. December 4, 2012.
